I would agree that Hauser (don’t know Sueing) would be far more likely to hit the ground running within the system than Smith or Brown. I also think Hauser will benefit from fitting into an ideal role that asks him to do his thing within the structure of the rest of the team. Watts is the alpha, Henry is the glue, Hauser can be the guy who hits open shots, rebounds, exploits mismatches, etc.
We need Smith to be successful and probably pretty good right away to hit our ceiling and he’s a much bigger up transfer.
Exactly. Overrated to begin the year, spend most of Jan and Feb in the back half of the top 25, finish strong and end up a 3/4 seed instead of 1 as expected in September – that’s a pretty typical outcome.
Again, yes – Izzo deserves the benefit of the doubt. Remarkable success. But, again, I don’t think prognosticators really understand WHEN to give it to him and when not to. I wasn’t the only one that could have told you that last year’s team was going to miss McQuaid and Goins a whole lot, or that Izzo needs senior role players. Assuming Hauser is going to be huge for them requires not factoring in the long list of times it hasn’t gone well with a guy playing big minutes in his first year in the rotation. People make these mistakes about MSU year in/year out. We could also take this a step further and wonder how realistic it is to have expectations when the guy who anchored the offense is gone and replaced by a guy who played SG last year, or whether you can thrive with the guy who anchored the defense being replaced by a player who is entirely different and not a plus defender. This is a year for which the volume of questions and assumptions about MSU is pretty big.
Is it the consensus here that we expect to be as good as last year? My expectation is that 16th (where we ranked last year) is probably about the ceiling if everything goes well. I would expect in the 21-35 range with a reasonably safe tourney spot. And then get into 15-20 range if everything goes really well. We have a decent amount of talent, but some very serious holes in critical spots left by Simpson and Teske (shot creation and post-defense).
I agree that’s fair and I’d put Hauser over either one of our transfers. But I’d still take the two of them over one Hauser. They should be two of our top six or seven players even if less of a sure thing.
I think 16th is right in the range of what I personally expect this year. We were also probably closer to 10th last year if Livers hadn’t gotten hurt. I do think the ceiling is much higher than you think, mostly depending on how good Smith is. The history for up-transfers isn’t great but if he can be a good solid PG the ceiling gets really high IMO.
There’s a lot of uncertainty about us. But there’s also a lot of uncertainty about most teams other than Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois. One thing in which I am confident: Hauser is going to have his defensive struggles and he’s gonna be benched more than he should be. This is a big getting first-year minutes from Tom Izzo.
MSU will be a lot worse than they look on paper if Captain Foster Loyer plays actual minutes at PG and Thomas Kithier plays the most minutes of anyone at the 4/5. Both of which are extremely real possibilities.
I think Loyer will play rotation minutes but I’d be pretty shocked if Kithier plays the most minutes at the 5, let alone the 4 and 5? You are looking at Hauser as a 30mpg type guy at the four.
I think our range this season, barring significant injuries, is 20-30, or between a 5 and an 8 seed. I think a ceiling of higher than that is overly optimistic based upon questions primarily at the guard position, questions which include not only decent/good production from Smith but also depth concerns. I think a floor below 30 is extremely pessimistic for a team with 2 of the the top 10 players in the conference, a double digit scoring, excellent defensive guard alongside, and the additional influx of a top 40 center prospect and (hopefully) a double digit scoring, strong rebounding Power 5 transfer in Brown.
It’s hard to predict. Brown’s an Aaron Henry level player, in the sense that he’s a multi-year major-conference starter as a complementary guy. Having that guy on or off your roster is going to determine a lot of the ceiling, and potentially the floor if Mike Smith isn’t a huge minutes guy and we need Eli more at PG and Brown possibly to step in more in the SG spot at which Eli would be playing less time. You take Aaron Henry off MSU’s roster and no doubt the outlook changes for that team.
The tiers seem to be important here. For example, three man weave has Michigan 9th, but they are basically equal to teams 5-8 as 5 teams are between 24th and 30th nationally. I can totally see Michigan having the lowest floor out of all the teams (center and/or PG don’t come together offensively and the defense struggles as well), so if you group teams into tiers and put Michigan at the bottom of tier 2 it seems reasonable. The difference is Michigan might have the best chance to get a top 3 big10 finish with two all-big 10 caliber players.
This is so silly. How can you look at a team with this much uncertainty and peg them down to a range of 4 seed lines? We have no idea what this team will look like other than Wagner, Livers and Brooks will be enormous pieces. Aside from that it’s a whole bunch of possibilities. In terms of the ceiling, the 3 main things that have to happen to hit the ceiling (at least in my mind are):
Smith plays 25-30 minutes a game at a quality Big Ten PG level. Not necessarily all conference or anything like that but a plus player.
Franz busts out to be one of the best players (if not the best player) in the conference
The 5 spot is not a weakness (in my mind this is most likely accomplished by Johns playing a bunch of minutes there)
IF all three of those things happen, Michigan is clearly going to be better than #20 in the country and could be a final four team. Do I think all three of those things will happen? Of course not. Is each of them individually possible? Absolutely! This will be a really fun season because of the uncertainty but I totally disagree with the ‘ceiling’ concept with this team.
As it should be because Henry’s got a ton of potential and that NBA body, but we’re talking about the next 3-4 months of basketball and not the next decade. But none of that changes the argument. Having or not having a solid 12/6 multi-year starter in a major conference (or Henry’s 10/4/3) is a big impact on your outlook.
And now we see that the pre-season rankings have done their job - convinced a bunch of fans to argue about it! No one knows…especially in this crazy year when we don’t even know who we’re playing.
I think MSU, even though they’re getting the Izzo bump, has a higher ceiling and a higher floor. I tend to think that people over-rate Henry (always in the doghouse), Hauser (good, not great, still an up-transfer), Watts (could be elite…but is he a PG?), and Langford (not sure if he can even play 20 minutes or look like himself). But, at worst you’re looking at four solid guys who should be the primary rotation pieces and even if two of them hit their potential you’re at the top of the league.
Michigan is probably a 20-30 range team nominally and has to hit on a couple more wildcards with Smith being a solid B10 PG and Dickinson being ready to play right away. Could both happen? Sure…but more likely that one or both fall a little short.
You’re welcome to think it’s silly if you’d like. Me, I don’t think so. I have said before, and I will say again, that Michigan reminds me of 2018 OSU. That OSU team had a PG (C.J. Johnson) playing at about the level we hope/expect Smith to play at, the best player in the conference (KBD), and a 5 spot manned by a freshman (Wesson) which was neither strength or weakness, so it met the conditions of which you list, plus, like us, having a good shooting senior 2 guard (Kam Williams), a second talented forward who was a senior (Jae’Sean Tate), and little depth at guard. That team was a 5 seed, which I see as the likely ceiling for this team–I don’t see this as a FF or even EE team if all of what we are hoping for occurs, though anything can happen in a single elimination tournament. If some of the things you posit don’t happen, then we could certainly drop some off of the ceiling, but having Livers, Wagner and Brooks, in addition to other players with other experienced and talented players, makes the floor where I put it IMO. Again, you’re free to disagree.
You kind of just proved my point. A similar team was a 5 seed despite the fact that they had so little depth that Andrew Dakich played 20 minutes a game. Michigan has some concerns in the backcourt, they are absolutely not bad enough that they’ll be playing walk-ons, especially if the scenario I laid out where Smith is good happens. Take that OSU team, replace the 20 Andrew Dakich minutes with a good freshman (Zeb) or perhaps a larger lineup (Chaundee/Franz) and perhaps they are 2 or 3 games better? Which perhaps moves them up to a 2 or 3 seed?
